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1. In meeting together for public prayer, we follow the impulses of our own hearts, as well as obey the commands of our God. Prayer and worship are connected with our whole relation to God. God is in direct relation to the spirits that we are. We feel this, and therefore we must pray for spiritual blessings. God is in direct relation to the bodies that we have. They are his making, the care of his providence. They are subject to weariness and disease; they are the mediums of our virtue and of our vice. Out of the sense of the relation of our bodies to God, we are impelled to pray for temporal blessings. And God is also in close relation to our associations with one another - to our associations as families, as Churches, as fellow worshippers, and as citizens. Our best welfare, in all these relations, depends on him who is Lord of all natural laws, Lord of storms, Lord of harvests, Lord of sunshine, Lord of the wrath of men, and Lord too of their wealth. Let any man feel this, as every true man, every thinking man, must feel it, and that man will be impelled by his own spirit to meet with others, and say to others, "O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." God deals with us collectively here on earth. We may not think of separate Churches in heaven; of organized families in heaven. There are no towns, with distinct town interests, in heaven; no nations, with national qualities and national interests, in heaven. It is peculiar to our present human scenes that God deals with us collectively. This need not relieve our sense of individual responsibility. We do but show what a basis is laid for collective prayer, for public worship, in this fact, that God deals collectively with us. He can punish individuals in another world for their individual wrongdoings. He can only punish nations, as nations, for their national wrong doings, in this sphere. Collectively, God regards us; then collectively we should pray, collectively we should worship, collectively we should live for God. The man that refuses to join in public worship is breaking away from his humanity; and denying the gracious conditions and responsibilities under which God has placed him. It is a more familiar truth, that sharing in public worship is the direct command of our God.

2. What are the reasons which keep men from the performance at all, or from the due performance of this duty of public worship? To put our reasons out into the full blaze of the light is often sufficient to wither them up, and to make us altogether ashamed of them. Perhaps some persuade themselves to say, "Your worship is not really intended for us: it is for Christians, and we do not want to intrude." It is a mistake. God's worship is for men, all men, all God-made men, whether they fit in with our idea of what God would have them be or not. Some stay from public worship because they cannot arrange their domestic affairs so as conveniently to attend it. Be sure that you have really tried and failed, before you rest in this excuse. Most stay away from sheer indifference, from the carelessness which settles down over souls that willingly live to self and sin. Some men are indisposed to worship; and it is this indisposition with which we have to deal.

3. Under the terms, "associated, and public worship," three forms may be indicated.

(1) Family prayer. When the devoted Richard Baxter lived in Kidderminster, it is said there was not a house in which the evensong of praise might not be heard, and the uplifted prayer of earnest hearts. The rush of modern business life has swept away much family prayer.

(2) Social prayer. Times when two or three meet together, to plead the promise made to two of the disciples who agree to ask. The smaller meetings are specially fruitful in spiritual blessings.

(3) Public prayer. The services of the sanctuaries. The spiritual antitypes of the old temple worship at Jerusalem, "whither the tribes go up." Public worship sustains, as nothing else can do, our dependence on God, the Creator, the Provider, the Redeemer. "He made us, and not we ourselves;" "He redeemeth our life from destruction." He "sent his Son into the world, that we might live through him." Then surely we ought "to worship and bow down." - R.T.

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KJV: O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.

WEB: Oh come, let's worship and bow down. Let's kneel before Yahweh, our Maker,